The Presidential Daily Brief

intriguing

Mexico’s Day of the Dead Gets Spookier With Hollywood Treatment

This morbid holiday is starting to look more like Halloween. America’s longstanding fascination with the Day of the Dead is now making waves in Mexico itself. This weekend, life imitated art as Mexico City held its first-ever Dia de los Muertos parade: It wasn’t previously a tradition there, but a fictional parade featured in the recent James Bond movie Spectre. Many Mexicans welcome the new internationality, but others have criticized the cultural appropriation and Halloween-ification of the holiday, which celebrates and honors dead ancestors.